Cardiac disease is the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States and accounts for at least 30% of deaths worldwide. Although recent medical advances have resulted in improvements in the diagnosis and treatment of complex cardiac diseases, the incidence of premature morbidity and mortality remains large, at least in part due to a dearth of accurate in vivo and in vitro estimates of patient-specific parameters indicative of a patient's anatomy, physiology, and hemodynamics.
Blood flow modeling of the cardiovascular system provides insight into the conditions in a patient's blood vessels and may be useful for diagnostics, prognosis, and surgical planning. Models with different geometrical scales have been applied, including lumped models (e.g., 0D-models), one-dimensional models, and three-dimensional models with rigid or compliant walls (e.g., fluid-structure interaction models). Lumped models may be used to obtain quick results but are unable to capture wave propagation phenomena in an arterial tree. Three-dimensional models, on the other hand, may accurately model the local behavior of blood, but are computationally very expensive, thus making the modeling of complex arterial trees infeasible in a clinical setting. The one-dimensional model represents a good balance between computational speed and accuracy.